Closer Look: Interior

SilverStone is known for their innovative case designs, and the SG08 is certainly unusual in its cooling setup. A single massive 180mm Air Penetrator fan sucks in air through a removable filter and blows it down into the case, where it exits from the right side. The fan is almost inaudible at its "low" setting and unobtrusive although audible on "high". In this image the fan filter is sitting on top of the optical drive bay. You must remove the top of the case to get at the fan filter.

Four screws (removed in this image) secure the optical drive bay. You'll need to take it out to install the optical drive. I installed a SilverStone slot-loading drive into this bay. The accessories package included with the SG08 includes the four tiny screws needed to secure the drive to the tray.

The drive caddy is under the optical drive bay and can accommodate two 2.5" drives on the bottom and one 3.5" drive on the top. The mounting points for the 3.5" drive use yellow rubber isolators to quell noise; oddly, this case was missing one as delivered.

The drive caddy mounts just above the power supply. The part of the case receives virtually no airflow, so I wouldn't recommend a VelociRaptor or other high-RPM 3.5" hard drive here. By the way, you're going to want to get some right-angled SATA connectors for the 2.5" drives, as they're very close to the side panel and standard SATA cables will poke out too far.

With the fan and drive bays removed, you've got a straight shot into the interior of the case. Four mounting posts for a mini-ITX motherboard are pre-installed. At the right of this image you can see the power supply included with the case. The included (short) ATX form factor power supply is one of the things that makes this case interesting. Most mini-ITX cases require "sfx" form factor power supplies, which can be difficult to find, especially in high wattage ratings (SilverStone does have a nice 450 watt model). This 600W unit is an 80 Plus Bronze certified single-rail design that includes two 8/6-pin PCI-E connectors for your video card.

Looking at this photo, you might be thinking that the upper rails would make useful handles to pick up the chassis while you're working on it. Don't. The sheet metal forming these rails is thin and it's very easy to bend them. I also noticed the sheet metal of the rear panel was equally thin and easy to deform when snapping in the I/O shield.

Slim optical drive only, included power supply is non-modular, cable management very difficult, only takes one 3.5" HDD, price is very high, too heavy, non rigid construction. These issues are simply unacceptable.

In my opinion, the Lian Li PC-Q08B has all the advantages but none of the above issues that the Silverstone case has. It is approx 80mm taller, but that is just about the only minor issue and I am happy with it!

While I haven't used this case, the comments from Yanni are a bit disingenuous. It's very hard to find a decent Mini-ITX case with a 600w power supply that will actually FIT. Finding regular ATX PSUs that are small enough and can power a full size dual slot graphics card is difficult at best. Cable management CAN be hard with the amount of space in this case, but considering the size of the ase management is not quite the issue that it's made out to be. I'll admit that the non-rigid construction could be an issue but I'm not entirely certain as to why. In regards to the point about the lack of 3.5" HDD slots...this case is designed, as are many SFF cases, for 2.5" drives as primary. You can get 2.5" drives with pretty decent capacity for about the same price as 3.5"'s. You can run a 2.5" for main OS duties (500GB, like the Hybrid Momentus XT or and SSD of your choice and a 1TB 3.5" for storage and apps). You just need to think about the flexibility as opposed to what are perceived limitations.

The Lian Li PC-Q08B is a very good case and does afford plenty of flexibility but for those that dislike the perforated front and glowing fan this case does a very good job, if only on paper. I have mine on order and am eager to give it a whirl.